A Rant

I like how facebook is asking me how I am, these days.  How I am?  How am I... indeed....

I am, thanks for asking fb, dangerously close to becoming that which I loathe most in the world- fearful.  A fearful person.  And I have never, never been fearful (my weird pathological phobias of spiders and giant squid... and childbirth... don't count).  I have never, never allowed fear to dictate the terms of any decision I have made or make.

But here I am, becoming fearful.  Becoming a mouse.

That's how I am, facebook.  So glad to address your concern and obvious interest in the state of my being.

Addendum

I should add two things to my obsessions... Stripes and Tunics.

A New Obsessions List

With some old favorites... I know I know.. I really AM obsessed.  Totally.  Utterly.  OBSESSED.

So I just discovered Emma Stine's colorful, tasteful, and perfectly sweet website.  And I would love to reward myself for this charming little discovery by getting myself a little something.  Too bad I'm broke like a joke.... like a bad joke.  Reward- cancelled.

Oh Lord.  ARGO.  I don't think I have stopped raving about it's brilliance since seeing it with Mom.  Not only intensely driven, but absolutely wicked one-liners.

I'm not sure that I haven't blogged about this website before, but I dig it (as confirmed by my use of a double negative... booyah).  I especially dig my new board Girl Crushes- to which I should add Florence Welch.  Duh.

This show.  I hated it at first, thought it only irritating, but now I find that Johnny Lee Miller grows on me every time he opens his snarky, deliciously British mouth.  And Lucy Lui sports some wicked duds.

This photo.  Thank you BBC- and all the photographers who added to it.

Also, I should probably give a big shout out to BBC in general.  Their online news is the only I follow. I fell in love with it during my time in China and have remained faithful since.  Their coverage is not only globally aware, it is (to borrow from myself) deliciously British.

Watches.  It's weird, I know.  And I'm sure that my growing obsession with time reveals some deep dark secret about my psyche.  But I'm also sure that my psyche is already deep enough and dark enough without us delving into the provocation provided by the constant tick-tick-ticking of that tiny second-hand.  So let us leave that to another day and another blog.

Despite what it does to my beleaguered system, I drink this tea nearly everyday.

Hmm... I suppose that's enough for now, eh friends?  Until next time, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

A Quick Blog- On Dreams

They say that once you dream in a foreign language, said language is truly a part of you, your brain, your wiring.

For the past two nights I have dreamt of feasts- feasts during which I ate nothing or drank Diet Coke.  I guess I've confirmed my wiring.

Much love, friends.

Disposable Goods

I have been really lost, for a really, really long time.

I have drifted along, letting myself float along with the ebb and flow of days, weeks, months, and now I am encroaching on 'years.'

Today it occurred to me that, in my mind, I am a disposable good.  I am that lost, to myself, that I am no better, no more worthy of a place than a paper plate- or a plastic cup.  I am not pottery.  I am not stained glass or a Tiffany lamp.  I have no vaulted ceilings of cathedrals nor graceful arcs of mosques.  I am neither the great American novel nor Virginia Woolf.

No, I think of myself as the day-old newspaper; the one you would use to wrap up a vase or some other delicate, precious good.  I am bubble wrap; a Starbucks cardboard cup- carelessly discarded and careless about it.

That is how very lost I have been for a very long time.  I came to this realization only today as I stared out the kitchen window onto the frostbitten lot.  There, in the trees, nests, bones, and rocks, is permanency.  There in nature exists what I want to be- steady and present.  Cold, warm, all the opposites all the time; dualistic; dramatic; present.

Instead I constantly throw myself away- and I expect others to throw me away.  I expect my own disposal.

The nature of the beast which prowls through my mind, my heart, my soul, is mean.  The nature of the beast has an honesty that reeks of brutality, meanness, and self-loathing.

Ah the beast of disposable goods.

xoxo, Friends.

How Kings Make Me Cry

The past week or so has proved outlandishly emotional on so many levels that I am left floundering.  And weepy.

To begin with, I concluded once again that the support I am given and love I receive is utterly undeserved.  Utterly.  I have known this for... ever.  I do nothing to deserve anything.  And yet I am given.  Stupidly, instead of gratefulness I often feel guilt.

There is, of course, a depth to plumb here.  But suffice to say that what the good, loving, wonderful, kind, beautiful, Beautiful, BEAUTIFUL, people I know feel for me should not... be.  It should not be.

But more intensely- in the middle of all of this re-realization, I decided that tattooing the entwined stag of beautiful and heartbreaking Celtic Lore on my ribcage was a brilliant idea.  Which it was, absolutely.   No regrets on that one... except that I just didn't realize how much it would HURT.  Holy mother of all things tattooed: Rib Cage + Needle + Emotional Breakdown = Pain.  Immense, gutting, churning, gasping, weeping pain.  And I wept.  On the table while my Lovely Lee laced a Stunning Stag onto my delicate skin, I cried like a baby.  I cried and I cried and I cried.

Bless my Mother- who avoided photos of my red,
sniffly, blotchy, tear-streaked face while documenting
the Stag Entwined.  

I cried for the loss I have experienced over the past year and a half.  I cried for all the people who have loved me- who love me- and whom I have disappointed.  I cried for the meaning of the stag- the King of the Forest- entwined by vines, imprisoned and eternally struggling.

I cried because by the third layer of ink on my raw skin I just wanted to go home and sit in a lidocaine bath.  For three hours.  Which is about the time it took to finish this beautiful creature who now makes his home on me.

And you thought I was kidding when I said I was getting a bit weepy.

Until next time- my advice is to a) avoid tattoos on your ribcage; b) especially if you are in the middle of reassessing your cosmic well-being for the thousandth time this year.

Much love, Dearhearts.

Brother Bear

Today is my brother's birthday.

And in celebration I must say how proud I am of him.  I have witnessed a most impressive evolution in his existence over the past couple of years and the person he is becoming is a person I am happy to know and happy to love.

He is my blood and for that (after nearly three decades of sibling rivalry/issues/bunk), I am ever-grateful.

Happy Birthday, Brother Bear.

I love you.

Some Poetry for Consideration

First:

The sinister ministrations of the witch-child-
How misunderstood.
There is no sinister in the witch-
no ministrations for evil
which bends the will of the world to the witch-
No the witch's will is bent to the worlds.
Bending, bending, bending until
broken.

For only then does the witch become the ward, does the witch become the watcher, does she become the power.
------

Then:

Take time- and THINK.
For this Formidable Force
is causing questionable qualms:
Friend, foe, forlornly forgotten
In favor of such False Fraternities-

Lines drawn in dire circumstances
are often drawn carelessly,
inconsequentially.

Alas! this Abominating Altar
Alters all Persuasions,
Aspirations-

And God the Good Grows Old.
-----

Finally:

Foggy images flash behind the pages:
linen paper filters light, so sweetly crepuscular.
I watch memories and shadows float by behind the restricting barrier.
It makes them seem lovelier- like a dream
Or an idea I once had.
How delicate.  I imagine that they are my past
and my past is fuzzy like flowers, like petals-
Not clear and careful as it really is.

I wish for clouds to muddy things up.
I wish for the bitter taste of clarity to fade.

I was not kidding, a couple of blogs ago, when I detailed my New Year's Eve tradition as being generally alone and bitter.  I am home with the boys tonight, getting ready to feed them doggie benadryl so that they don't have a psychotic break when the fireworks start.

I am also pondering the merits of resolutions tonight- on the night when we most often try to set absurd goals for ourselves.  I resolve.. no more pretense.  No more pretending.  I also resolve to not be myself anymore.  I know that everyone likes to think that they want to be more themselves, to be a better version of themselves.  I just want to be someone else.

To all, a Happy New Year.

To me... a different one.

A Conversation- A Crisis

This morning I asked the Gypsy King, from whom I have inherited oh so many traits, just how much he had to do with naming me.  I don't know why it only struck me today- but I have never bothered asking him what role he had to do with illustrious, ancient, entitling of the Little Witch.

We Gypsies Roam, We Wander
And We Occasionally Drink While Roaming
and Wandering.

He is, after all, my father- he supplied a significant amount of chromosomes to my unique DNA concoction, spent the 9 months of my gestation dealing with my mother, my elder brother, and a 105 pound Irish Setter and, of course, he was present at my birth (I assume).  He has been here for the previous 29 years.  He is my King, my Hero, the Bob.

His response to my quandary of "Daddy, was Kathrine at the top of your list for names for me?" was "No."

"Oh.  Well.. what was?"

"Amber."

"Oh.  Were there any other  names?"

"I don't remember, that was almost thirty years ago!" (This brings me to a wee digression- HOLY BANANAS I AM ALMOST THIRTY YEARS OLD.  And what do I have to show for it?  Scars, Debt, and Destruction. I have nearly thirty years of self-debasement under my belt, two higher degrees, and double jointed shoulders.  Those... I got from my mother.)

Cringing both internally and externally I asked... "Um, was Kathrine even on your list?"

"No." (Oh the things you learn when you ask perfectly unreasonable questions).

Well hell.  The man who inadvertently bequeathed me wanderlust, a distinctly European set of features, and a desperate desire to KNOW and GO amongst other things... alas, his most profound role in my  naming was to argue with my mother on a technicality of the spelling (a second digression- the King lost the argument- it's hard to trump a woman who has  recently delivered a watermelon-sized child through a grape-width wee canal- which has ultimately led to the eternal misspelling of my name).  And it wasn't even on his list of choices!  What's in a name? An Identity?  A Distinction?  A connection to the namers?  And if so... how could I have received so much from the King who apparently was reluctant to name me my name?!?!

Needless to say I had a minuscule existential crisis based on this one conversation.

But in the end the end it's just that.  It is what it is.  A name is a name.  A person is a person is a person- regardless of the name and perhaps because of it.  I have grown into it, we all grow into our own, I think.  I am a Kathrine, a Kate, a [insert any of the embarrassing nicknames my family has called me over the years].  I am middle-name-less and decidedly more interesting because of it.  My father is the Bob, the King of the Gypsies, Robert Albert.  My mother is Momma, the Witch who Makes Things Live, Maureen.

We are who we are, existential crisis or no.  Naming or not.

Until Next time, Friends...

Kathrine, TheBobsDottir